The Goddess named Regret

You could have seen it coming,
had you not been surrounded
by endless azure,
that blue mirror,
the echoing sky.

When she told you she was
leaving-- she was clear that
the evacuation
wasn't only of your island,
but the whole
male archipelago.

You told her that she'd prefer to drown,
than live on a raft. That she'd only
be airlifted to another
crumbling spit of sand.

Then there are your brothers' shipwrecks;
frozen as they wade ashore, islands
malformed of broken-bits.
Ships listing in the silt, ground down
to shoreline by the absent
lapping away at the foots of their beds.

You could have noticed the warning signs:
Time scraped on, a pale beggar
hobbling down a wide strand,
as buildings shot from the shoreline
meeting the sky halfway.

You could have seen her eyes water,
and not believed her bit
about the sour sea air.

You could have decided
not to call her that name, the one
derived from an Indian goddess,
but meaning surly bitch.

You could have stopped
pounding into her
all those reminders
of being shipwrecked...

Ancient Chinese Guy visits rehab

So much individual work that we require in this culture of ours. In my Eastern Philosophizing, I have come to imagine how alien this modern America would seem to an ancient Chinese guy. He'd show up to a reality show celebrity rehab all like, what the hell, why is nobody tending the fields they're dry as a bone and completely furrowless where is the plough and the ox and why are we spending our days sitting in a circle of chairs talking about our childhoods which by the way shouldn't have been that complicated since they were spent in blind filial obedience to our parents because after all would we even exist without them?

And then we'd all turn to him and laugh and go, silly old man there're no fields to plow anymore plus we have machines for that. Besides, tilling the fields at this altitude, in this kind of climate-- you kidding? You'd be spending your evenings plucking off precancerous moles. Meanwhile the Chinese guy would actually be picking some invisible creatures from his scalp while we're telling him this, causing one blonde lady with crows feet to remark, my god do you really have things growing on you why haven't you had that checked out at some point and should we all really be sitting this close to him right now when clearly he needs medical treatment?

These are all questions for the Chinese guy but seeing as how he can't actually respond it's a wonder why we even bother asking them, except to hear ourselves affirm that yes he's clearly nutso and who let him in here to our sacred space just to dump all over our whole process?

Tales are Innumerable of Love

Late in life, William S. Burroughs
remarked that
Love is nature's most
powerful pain-killer.
And this from a lifelong junky,
by the way.

*

... that within
the tether of the wedded,
flows an opiate
stronger than heroin;
sweetening the gaze,
numbing the brain.

*

We don't have names for these arrangements,
that arrive like wayward houseguests; unannounced,
that depart like an arrowhead,
straining from your ribcage
at a world it cannot help but injure.

*

Consider ourselves,
the lovers we've shed--
little children hearts carried,
each piece a meal,
in Dad's old cigar boxes;
slivers cold as sushi...

... tripping beside
a pile of rubble, stooping
to spill the contents
into earth, awaiting
some response.

*

Jesus, you're
half her age and
twice as confused.
Here is a woman, hurting
and a man, pleasure-seeking.
The cosmogony of modern romance--
chronicle their trajectory,
like errant planets.

*

The foretaste of disgust, abandonment,
Here in her pursed lips,
her swollen eyes, her dampening
cheeks. Still, you sacrifice
the bones of the departed
to the fires of her thighs.
Soundless, she awaits your
devastation, broken upon
the boulder of your bed.
Arriving eviscerated,
she awaits her grief.

*

Crows perch in her hair,
staring down the fresh kill.
Something tells you to guard her,
jealously. Use her flames
on the sorrows you hold.
Hammer them out,
like sheets of metal.

Batter your
boundless desires,
before more lovers leave them
useless,
screaming in the rain.
Forge your pain into something
completely other.

*